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Data Exchange Tools and Conversion Utilities

This project developed, refined and tested models for data exchange for both survey data and qualitative research data. Research was also conducted into the viability of developing the automated conversion procedures for legacy formats. This has led to the publication of the QuDEx schema, recommended for rich description of archival qualitative data.

This project explored the feasibility of developing data
exchange models and data conversion tools for primary research data
collected in the course of empirical research. It developed,
refined and tested models for data exchange for both survey data
and qualitative research data based on eXtensible Mark-up Language
(XML)/Resource Description Framework (RDF) schema and developed
tools for data import and export. The work also researched the
feasibility of developing automated conversion procedures for
legacy formats.

The data formats included are those that are commonly used in
research such as SPSS, Stata, XML, Atlas-ti, MaxQDA and Nvivo. The
test data selected for this project were from the social sciences,
but these formats were typically found across all domains of
primary research. A small scale evaluation of the models and tools
were carried out in order to inform Jisc of the most viable options
for future development in this area.

The development of a model for describing qualitative data
collections took as its starting point earlier work undertaken in
the early 2000s by the UK Data Archive on descriptive metadata for
its non-numeric data collections.

In 2003 the Archive's qualitative team developed a draft but
limited formal definition of a common XML vocabulary and Document
Type Definition (DTD) based on the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)
for describing complex data structures. Following a Jisc grant in
2005-2006, a draft XML metadata schema, known as QuDEx (Qualitative
Data Exchange) was designed and published. Other existing standards
were reviewed as part of this work.

QuDEx arose from a comparison of the key functionalities for the
market-leading qualitative software packages in the hope of
stimulating data exchange and import and export facilities between
these softwares. It defined common denominator functions for
documenting,organising and analysing qualitative data: coding,
classifying, memoing, and relating. These core concepts helped
defined the QuDEx schema.

The QuDEx standard/schema is a software-neutral format for
qualitative data that preserves annotations of, and relationships
between, data and other related objects. It can be viewed as the
optimal baseline data exchange model for the archiving and
interchange of data and metadata.

April 2008: The DExT final report from the Quantitative DExT project,
undertaken by Pascal Heus of ODaF is now available. The DDI-DExT
application is available for download from the project repository on ODaF Forge. Two
packages are made available: the main DDI-DExT application and the
SPSS Reader. More details on the DDI-DExT application can be found
at the DDI Alliance Tools web
site.

March 2008: The final schema (version 3) to be created under the
DExT Jisc award, associated documentation and XML instance files
are all now available from the DExT Schema page.

October 2007: Versions 1 and 2 of the draft QuDex schema were
available for comment on the DExT WIKI, now taken down. The
previous schema versions plus change notes are available on
request.

February 2007: In order to assess the different metadata schemas
that are relevant to the description of qualitative data resources,
a brief comparison
of metadata schemas was produced:

February 2007: A similar comparison has been compiled to compare key
CAQDAS functionality that is relevant for any future import and
export functionality to a middle-ground non-proprietary format:

At the software vendors meeting an overview of the basic models
for data exchange was provided. The software vendors have agreed to
discuss which basic aspects of functionality might be common across
packages. A WIKI was set up for discussion on this issue.

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